Hey @Johan @HottestRod @Trin Tragula
I went through approx. 1000 Steam reviews out of interest and ended up with a decent list of the issues, because apparently I have nothing else to do on a Saturday morning. It is interesting though how many players see similar gameplay issues, though most Steam reviews lack any mentionable information. I hope it helps improving the game, and most of them are pretty good, actually.
I’ve read a new journalist articles on the game, but I left those out as they were generally shallow and do not provide any new information, which was interesting as well, actually. Steam is a better source in this matter, apparently. Let’s trust the crowd knowledge in this post at least.
Disclaimer: I’ve skipped general complaints about studio, business, release or DLC policies, that are not that frequent, by the way. Only gameplay, game design, UI etc. in this list. But most players actually complain about shallow or bland or broken game mechanics, which is a good sign, I believe. And, the issues are grouped and roughly prioritised (judging by the number of reviews they appeared in).
—
GENERAL
Frequent
- You might have underestimated that you’ve attracted a large portion of Stellaris-only and Total War players that do not care about EU4/CK2 standards or even consider those games too primitive.
- Most negative comments are about a shallow game experience or shallow game mechanics, compared to EU4/CK2, and the weak and confusing UI (i.e. missing back button in UI, known from CK2; see below).
- Playing as Rome is not a challenge. But Rome and the Diadochi are the only nations with some depth at least.
- Game is more snowballing than CK2, EU4 or even HOI4.
- Game feels unpolished to most players, even in many positive reviews.
Rare
- No tutorial. The tutorial is very bad indeed.
- No key control re-binding.
UNIQUENESS
Frequent
- Lack of details: Only 4 buildings to build, only generic unit types with generic unit icons, and thus the nations feels all the same.
- Game feels shallow, probably because copying EU4 and CK2 mechanics was a bad idea. It always leads to this.
- Nations do not feel special, only a set of generic “Traditions” distinct them. But i’s the antiquity after all.
Rare
- Victoria 2 has more atmosphere. An interesting point: I assume you add more culture and nation specific antiquity pictures/photos to the game?
- Barbarians and tribal nations do not feel like a threat to Rome or the big nations. Lack of immersion here.
- The mix of EU4 + CK2 + POPs is good on paper, as EU:R, but not well done and underdeveloped in this game.
CHARACTERS
Frequent
- Lack of development and a reason to care. Too shallow. It’s interesting because the characters do things but perhaps it would help if they would be more aggressive. I believe it also has to do with the fact of republics. If a new player is playing Rome or Carthage, he might feel that all factions and characters do not matter and are the same — because you conquer everything regardless of the Senate and the currently ruling character. This republic mechanics issue might have been less an issue in CK2 because you almost always play non-republics. Solution: Think CK2. You are not some generic god, but instead say that this family is your — this is you. THEN you care, even if not in power. But, of course, what if your family is not in power? Good question. It doesn’t matter who is in power and who you kill because you, as a player, remain in power. Big game design issue, I guess, that is going back to EU:R. Hm.
- No feeling of agency. The characters seem to play for themselves and the player do not need to care.
- Family mechanic useless, but I guess because it has no benefit for the player, see above.
Rare
- Clearly CK2 players: Character events less immersive and fun than in CK2.
- Unclear/useless character stats such as family prestige, prominence or legitimacy, despite being so prominent.
- What is family “scorned” about? Unclear what to do about it, feels useless and annoying.
- Nobody is corrupt, yet there is a corruption system?
- Culture is not a problem.
DIPLOMACY
Frequent
- Lack of coalition wars. Aggressive expansion is less an issue than in previous games.
- No improvements compared to EU4/CK2 with less options. Maybe change the UI a bit? Add something new. Not another game with the CB -> conquest -> wait -> repeat cycle.
- CB is too easy because it only requires more Oratory Power, compared to EU4 or CK2.
- You can take everything in a peace deal and your allies do not care.
- AI wars end without a notification even if you were involved, or at war with a nation that does not exist anymore.
Rare
- Clearly TW players, but good point: Why do not antiquity clans/tribes or Indian powers the same CB mechanics as Rome or Carthage? It all feels the same because you conquer the same way. Add some savagery to the game?
- Playing as Parthia was disappointing for many players, apparently? I’ve checked: Probably due to the overlord mechanics. CK2 was better at handling it.
COMBAT
Frequent
- Clone of EU4, shallow and uninspired. No improvement.
- Generals appear to have a bigger impact on battle results than in EU4 or CK2. Could it be? I’ve seen weird results myself.
Rare
- Second line in combat mechanic is gone?
- Fortresses are annoying to a few players, but I guess that we had that discussion in EU4. It’s ok imho.
MANAGEMENT
Frequent
- POP system is not self explaining, unimportant and tedious. Why are only slaves generating taxes again? What about tribesmen conversion? Also, you lose track of it the bigger your nation, and then you do not care anymore. Why would anybody micro manage it, and what for, with what overviews? Unclear to many players.
- Peace time nation management is not fun, and less fun than EU4.
- Going beyond high tyranny seem to have no bigger effect in republics.
- Trade system is complicated and doesn’t matter soon. Lack of overview. It feels then like work only. Maybe replace it with a more general trade good system? Not picking one good per province after another, where you do not care.
- Religion is not as important as one might think, judging by the detailed texts. All religions play/feel generic.
- From a certain nation size on all nations feel and play the same, regardless of the government system.
- Game focusses on war only. We had those discussions before in Stellaris and EU4, I believe, where bad comments came from business and Johann. But in time those games improved. Maybe handle it this time better?
- No force limit.
- No core system. Just take everything.
- No anti-expansion system in place, some complain.
- Only way to increase economy is by conquest or migration (for tribes).
- Tech research boring, only % stat increase. No new units, no new buildings, no new ideas. (Good point, imho.)
- Between wars you are just waiting without anything to happen. Some call it a “waiting game”.
- Population growth is unclear.
- You can install people in positions but they seem to not do much.
- Instant improvements (insta build, insta promote etc.) seem to be boring too many players. Maybe return to EU4 or CK2 in that matter? Probably an atmosphere and immersion thing.
Rare
- The same players complain about a too instant conversion mechanics. Maybe add waiting again?
- Balancing issues after 50-75 years in game. My guess: Tech system (too many buffs on one side) and that this game has a bigger big blue blob issue than EU4 had at times.
- Laws are worthless and most forget about them.
- Maybe remove mana/power <> money conversion? It feels odd, especially to TW players, I guess.
- Trade offers feel like work and without any sense. Player loses quickly overview of what he is doing and agreeing to, and why. As mentioned, maybe replace the trade system with a less annoying mechanic (and please do not repeat the Victoria 2 mistake by just auto-trading it because then you could remove it all together, imho).
- Statecraft does not matter.
- Colonization does not matter.
- Slaves come out of nowhere and go to anywhere. No conqueror slavery mechanic in place.
- Governor: Why across such large portions of the map? So most other character can never rule?
- Decisions feel useless.
- Mercenaries are cheap compared to CK2 and have no downsides.
- Difference between government types unclear.
- Omen mechanic is too simple and lacks an Omen-ish mystery feeling to it.
- If trade, then some trade goods needs some balance. Big differences.
- Very ahistorical standing army mechanic like in EU4. Bear in mind that in antiquity only Rome had, at some point, a standing army. Not even Sparta had one, though it was close. Though most players do not know and not notice. But of course you could try to make it more like CK2, to compare it with PDX games.
- Tribes mechanic seem a bit broken. Corruption is not an issue. Fight constantly civil wars. Less fun for some players.
- POPs do not complain. An interesting comment, I believe, compared to Stellaris or other games.
UI
Frequent
- UI icon readability is bad. Never let illustrators design your icons, a common issue. Round buttons at the top? Beautiful, but hard to read and remember. Talk to a real UI designer for a few days and not another illustrator who is unable to abstract and let go details. He/she’ll see the issue.
- Quality of life UI improvements known from EU4/CK2, i.e. why is there no map info about manpower increase when I build barracks?
- Talk to a UI designer about those ugly notification icons and its behaviour? What is the second icons about? It’s ugly too many players and just weird.
- No return button in the UI similar to CK2, when you browse through the characters details. -> This might indeed improve the UI a lot.
Rare
- Lack of discovery. Why can anybody in Britain see every province and its details, even in India? And vice versa.
- Lack of general nation comparisons known from CK2 and EU4. You know, those little Excel stat tables.
- No character search?
- Lots of mechanics are not explained, even no tooltips on what to do or how to improve it.
- Ugly and sometimes creepy character icons.
MAP
Rare
- Map readability could be improved by either removing mercenary armies (that look the same as normal armies), or reduce their size, or show them in a different fashion.
- Map feels dead. No traders or daily life going on on the map. Add those tiny ships/wagons from EU4? Certainly a thing Total War players are more aware of.
- Fog shader is annoying.
NAVAL
Frequent
- No naval battles. Navies for troop transport only, mainly. This is an issue Rome vs Carthage in particular.
AI
Frequent
- Lack of focus, even when outnumbering the player. AI seems to break big armies into smaller 10k ones easily.
- Why is a nation half the size of the player able to build a bigger army than he has at max?
- AI seems to offer alliances and then breaking those shortly after signing it.
- AI is unable to handle naval combat and transports. Not sure.
- AI seem to not build enough troops if you are the war monger. AI seems to not care if you outnumber them.
Rare
- AI unit composition seem sometimes to neglect available resources? Not seen it myself though.
- Rumour that AI is not affected by manpower? Not sure about that, but it is mentioned by some.
- Civil wars with enemies that have high loyalty? Not seen it, but it is reported a few times. Cities with high loyalty and happiness join civil war faction for no reason it seems.
TECH SUPPORT
Frequent
- Overheating, performance hungry. Not sure? Is it the new ocean/map technology/shaders? If so, tell the map techie that he shall not calculate ocean waves in real-time. A common mistake. It would explain overheating GPU’s despite a rather simple terrain engine and not much going on.
- Crashes? You probably saw the crash reports.
- Multiplayer.
—
ON SCRUM
If you made it to here, I was wondering how open the project culture or company culture is to issue reports and ideas during production. We’ve seen that most PDX games run into issues at release or that they feel unpolished, which in turn means that there might be a lack of a good communication culture (because let’s face it, some developers and artists must have seen those issues, so why were they not heard?). If projects with up to 1,000 employees I was part of made it, with the common mix of different departments, there must be a way to improve it on PDX side.
I assume that you are using Scrum in some way, with Dailies, Retrospectives etc.? Maybe there is way to look into this again, trying to improve the communication culture, encourage the diligent yet perhaps introvert nerd to speak up who is saw those issues before release and did not find a way to talk to the directors and managers due to their ego or a company or project culture that prevents it? Usually, old company founders are an issue, for instance. But generally, it takes some self-awareness and external advise to change such a culture into a modern Scrum approach (because many old managers will defend their traditional management and organisational skills and procedures), because in a real Scrum project the team is above the game director which is a bit unusual. But, in the end, it helps the projects to see such issues earlier instead of at release. I’ve seen it even in a much bigger project with approx. 20,000 employees, and it was a pain, and it took millions of Dollars of failure to realise a huge company that it might need to change a few things on the management level — at least in some departments and projects. If you have a "Lead Developer" and a "Lead Artists" it is a good indicator that you are not using Scrum or not properly, and that you would fail in modern project management of bigger projects. In my experience with much bigger and complex projects, you do not need those IF you do it the Scrum way, but only if the team knows how to do it different, and it then becomes apparent how many trivial issues and improvements the team discovers itself; but of course, such cultural change will hurt a few people that dream of being some lead here and there or the director. If you are unsure about, maybe ask an (or multiple) external Scrum coaches on that matter, to learn about it. A few wiki articles will not do, especially when you think about the "Agile", "Scrum", and a game vision, game design that need some guidance.
I only mention it because most PDX game releases have issues, and Imperator: Rome might have been the worst yet, and you cannot even excuse it with technical issues as we’ve seen on Steam. Most players complain about game design, mechanics, and the UI, which is in turn a good thing because it means that they care.
I have to leave now. Private life and stuff. Good luck! And ping me if you need more info and my humble opinion.
I went through approx. 1000 Steam reviews out of interest and ended up with a decent list of the issues, because apparently I have nothing else to do on a Saturday morning. It is interesting though how many players see similar gameplay issues, though most Steam reviews lack any mentionable information. I hope it helps improving the game, and most of them are pretty good, actually.
I’ve read a new journalist articles on the game, but I left those out as they were generally shallow and do not provide any new information, which was interesting as well, actually. Steam is a better source in this matter, apparently. Let’s trust the crowd knowledge in this post at least.
Disclaimer: I’ve skipped general complaints about studio, business, release or DLC policies, that are not that frequent, by the way. Only gameplay, game design, UI etc. in this list. But most players actually complain about shallow or bland or broken game mechanics, which is a good sign, I believe. And, the issues are grouped and roughly prioritised (judging by the number of reviews they appeared in).
—
GENERAL
Frequent
- You might have underestimated that you’ve attracted a large portion of Stellaris-only and Total War players that do not care about EU4/CK2 standards or even consider those games too primitive.
- Most negative comments are about a shallow game experience or shallow game mechanics, compared to EU4/CK2, and the weak and confusing UI (i.e. missing back button in UI, known from CK2; see below).
- Playing as Rome is not a challenge. But Rome and the Diadochi are the only nations with some depth at least.
- Game is more snowballing than CK2, EU4 or even HOI4.
- Game feels unpolished to most players, even in many positive reviews.
Rare
- No tutorial. The tutorial is very bad indeed.
- No key control re-binding.
UNIQUENESS
Frequent
- Lack of details: Only 4 buildings to build, only generic unit types with generic unit icons, and thus the nations feels all the same.
- Game feels shallow, probably because copying EU4 and CK2 mechanics was a bad idea. It always leads to this.
- Nations do not feel special, only a set of generic “Traditions” distinct them. But i’s the antiquity after all.
Rare
- Victoria 2 has more atmosphere. An interesting point: I assume you add more culture and nation specific antiquity pictures/photos to the game?
- Barbarians and tribal nations do not feel like a threat to Rome or the big nations. Lack of immersion here.
- The mix of EU4 + CK2 + POPs is good on paper, as EU:R, but not well done and underdeveloped in this game.
CHARACTERS
Frequent
- Lack of development and a reason to care. Too shallow. It’s interesting because the characters do things but perhaps it would help if they would be more aggressive. I believe it also has to do with the fact of republics. If a new player is playing Rome or Carthage, he might feel that all factions and characters do not matter and are the same — because you conquer everything regardless of the Senate and the currently ruling character. This republic mechanics issue might have been less an issue in CK2 because you almost always play non-republics. Solution: Think CK2. You are not some generic god, but instead say that this family is your — this is you. THEN you care, even if not in power. But, of course, what if your family is not in power? Good question. It doesn’t matter who is in power and who you kill because you, as a player, remain in power. Big game design issue, I guess, that is going back to EU:R. Hm.
- No feeling of agency. The characters seem to play for themselves and the player do not need to care.
- Family mechanic useless, but I guess because it has no benefit for the player, see above.
Rare
- Clearly CK2 players: Character events less immersive and fun than in CK2.
- Unclear/useless character stats such as family prestige, prominence or legitimacy, despite being so prominent.
- What is family “scorned” about? Unclear what to do about it, feels useless and annoying.
- Nobody is corrupt, yet there is a corruption system?
- Culture is not a problem.
DIPLOMACY
Frequent
- Lack of coalition wars. Aggressive expansion is less an issue than in previous games.
- No improvements compared to EU4/CK2 with less options. Maybe change the UI a bit? Add something new. Not another game with the CB -> conquest -> wait -> repeat cycle.
- CB is too easy because it only requires more Oratory Power, compared to EU4 or CK2.
- You can take everything in a peace deal and your allies do not care.
- AI wars end without a notification even if you were involved, or at war with a nation that does not exist anymore.
Rare
- Clearly TW players, but good point: Why do not antiquity clans/tribes or Indian powers the same CB mechanics as Rome or Carthage? It all feels the same because you conquer the same way. Add some savagery to the game?
- Playing as Parthia was disappointing for many players, apparently? I’ve checked: Probably due to the overlord mechanics. CK2 was better at handling it.
COMBAT
Frequent
- Clone of EU4, shallow and uninspired. No improvement.
- Generals appear to have a bigger impact on battle results than in EU4 or CK2. Could it be? I’ve seen weird results myself.
Rare
- Second line in combat mechanic is gone?
- Fortresses are annoying to a few players, but I guess that we had that discussion in EU4. It’s ok imho.
MANAGEMENT
Frequent
- POP system is not self explaining, unimportant and tedious. Why are only slaves generating taxes again? What about tribesmen conversion? Also, you lose track of it the bigger your nation, and then you do not care anymore. Why would anybody micro manage it, and what for, with what overviews? Unclear to many players.
- Peace time nation management is not fun, and less fun than EU4.
- Going beyond high tyranny seem to have no bigger effect in republics.
- Trade system is complicated and doesn’t matter soon. Lack of overview. It feels then like work only. Maybe replace it with a more general trade good system? Not picking one good per province after another, where you do not care.
- Religion is not as important as one might think, judging by the detailed texts. All religions play/feel generic.
- From a certain nation size on all nations feel and play the same, regardless of the government system.
- Game focusses on war only. We had those discussions before in Stellaris and EU4, I believe, where bad comments came from business and Johann. But in time those games improved. Maybe handle it this time better?
- No force limit.
- No core system. Just take everything.
- No anti-expansion system in place, some complain.
- Only way to increase economy is by conquest or migration (for tribes).
- Tech research boring, only % stat increase. No new units, no new buildings, no new ideas. (Good point, imho.)
- Between wars you are just waiting without anything to happen. Some call it a “waiting game”.
- Population growth is unclear.
- You can install people in positions but they seem to not do much.
- Instant improvements (insta build, insta promote etc.) seem to be boring too many players. Maybe return to EU4 or CK2 in that matter? Probably an atmosphere and immersion thing.
Rare
- The same players complain about a too instant conversion mechanics. Maybe add waiting again?
- Balancing issues after 50-75 years in game. My guess: Tech system (too many buffs on one side) and that this game has a bigger big blue blob issue than EU4 had at times.
- Laws are worthless and most forget about them.
- Maybe remove mana/power <> money conversion? It feels odd, especially to TW players, I guess.
- Trade offers feel like work and without any sense. Player loses quickly overview of what he is doing and agreeing to, and why. As mentioned, maybe replace the trade system with a less annoying mechanic (and please do not repeat the Victoria 2 mistake by just auto-trading it because then you could remove it all together, imho).
- Statecraft does not matter.
- Colonization does not matter.
- Slaves come out of nowhere and go to anywhere. No conqueror slavery mechanic in place.
- Governor: Why across such large portions of the map? So most other character can never rule?
- Decisions feel useless.
- Mercenaries are cheap compared to CK2 and have no downsides.
- Difference between government types unclear.
- Omen mechanic is too simple and lacks an Omen-ish mystery feeling to it.
- If trade, then some trade goods needs some balance. Big differences.
- Very ahistorical standing army mechanic like in EU4. Bear in mind that in antiquity only Rome had, at some point, a standing army. Not even Sparta had one, though it was close. Though most players do not know and not notice. But of course you could try to make it more like CK2, to compare it with PDX games.
- Tribes mechanic seem a bit broken. Corruption is not an issue. Fight constantly civil wars. Less fun for some players.
- POPs do not complain. An interesting comment, I believe, compared to Stellaris or other games.
UI
Frequent
- UI icon readability is bad. Never let illustrators design your icons, a common issue. Round buttons at the top? Beautiful, but hard to read and remember. Talk to a real UI designer for a few days and not another illustrator who is unable to abstract and let go details. He/she’ll see the issue.
- Quality of life UI improvements known from EU4/CK2, i.e. why is there no map info about manpower increase when I build barracks?
- Talk to a UI designer about those ugly notification icons and its behaviour? What is the second icons about? It’s ugly too many players and just weird.
- No return button in the UI similar to CK2, when you browse through the characters details. -> This might indeed improve the UI a lot.
Rare
- Lack of discovery. Why can anybody in Britain see every province and its details, even in India? And vice versa.
- Lack of general nation comparisons known from CK2 and EU4. You know, those little Excel stat tables.
- No character search?
- Lots of mechanics are not explained, even no tooltips on what to do or how to improve it.
- Ugly and sometimes creepy character icons.
MAP
Rare
- Map readability could be improved by either removing mercenary armies (that look the same as normal armies), or reduce their size, or show them in a different fashion.
- Map feels dead. No traders or daily life going on on the map. Add those tiny ships/wagons from EU4? Certainly a thing Total War players are more aware of.
- Fog shader is annoying.
NAVAL
Frequent
- No naval battles. Navies for troop transport only, mainly. This is an issue Rome vs Carthage in particular.
AI
Frequent
- Lack of focus, even when outnumbering the player. AI seems to break big armies into smaller 10k ones easily.
- Why is a nation half the size of the player able to build a bigger army than he has at max?
- AI seems to offer alliances and then breaking those shortly after signing it.
- AI is unable to handle naval combat and transports. Not sure.
- AI seem to not build enough troops if you are the war monger. AI seems to not care if you outnumber them.
Rare
- AI unit composition seem sometimes to neglect available resources? Not seen it myself though.
- Rumour that AI is not affected by manpower? Not sure about that, but it is mentioned by some.
- Civil wars with enemies that have high loyalty? Not seen it, but it is reported a few times. Cities with high loyalty and happiness join civil war faction for no reason it seems.
TECH SUPPORT
Frequent
- Overheating, performance hungry. Not sure? Is it the new ocean/map technology/shaders? If so, tell the map techie that he shall not calculate ocean waves in real-time. A common mistake. It would explain overheating GPU’s despite a rather simple terrain engine and not much going on.
- Crashes? You probably saw the crash reports.
- Multiplayer.
—
ON SCRUM
If you made it to here, I was wondering how open the project culture or company culture is to issue reports and ideas during production. We’ve seen that most PDX games run into issues at release or that they feel unpolished, which in turn means that there might be a lack of a good communication culture (because let’s face it, some developers and artists must have seen those issues, so why were they not heard?). If projects with up to 1,000 employees I was part of made it, with the common mix of different departments, there must be a way to improve it on PDX side.
I assume that you are using Scrum in some way, with Dailies, Retrospectives etc.? Maybe there is way to look into this again, trying to improve the communication culture, encourage the diligent yet perhaps introvert nerd to speak up who is saw those issues before release and did not find a way to talk to the directors and managers due to their ego or a company or project culture that prevents it? Usually, old company founders are an issue, for instance. But generally, it takes some self-awareness and external advise to change such a culture into a modern Scrum approach (because many old managers will defend their traditional management and organisational skills and procedures), because in a real Scrum project the team is above the game director which is a bit unusual. But, in the end, it helps the projects to see such issues earlier instead of at release. I’ve seen it even in a much bigger project with approx. 20,000 employees, and it was a pain, and it took millions of Dollars of failure to realise a huge company that it might need to change a few things on the management level — at least in some departments and projects. If you have a "Lead Developer" and a "Lead Artists" it is a good indicator that you are not using Scrum or not properly, and that you would fail in modern project management of bigger projects. In my experience with much bigger and complex projects, you do not need those IF you do it the Scrum way, but only if the team knows how to do it different, and it then becomes apparent how many trivial issues and improvements the team discovers itself; but of course, such cultural change will hurt a few people that dream of being some lead here and there or the director. If you are unsure about, maybe ask an (or multiple) external Scrum coaches on that matter, to learn about it. A few wiki articles will not do, especially when you think about the "Agile", "Scrum", and a game vision, game design that need some guidance.
I only mention it because most PDX game releases have issues, and Imperator: Rome might have been the worst yet, and you cannot even excuse it with technical issues as we’ve seen on Steam. Most players complain about game design, mechanics, and the UI, which is in turn a good thing because it means that they care.
I have to leave now. Private life and stuff. Good luck! And ping me if you need more info and my humble opinion.
